The veto on the celebration of the Islamic rite in public spaces promoted by Vox in Jumilla (Murcia), and which was passed last Monday supported by the Popular Party through an amendment, underpins a strategy that Santiago Abascal's party is determined to push forward at a national level.

The measure, according to sources within the party, is a national initiative and is in line with the growing importance of the immigration debate in public conversation, something that has been welcomed at the party's headquarters on Calle Bambú. While Jumilla was the municipality that opened the way to limiting religious practices, Vox had previously proposed similar initiatives, both in other municipalities in the Murcia region—which the party refuses to specify—and in other parts of Spain.

Last June, Vox filed a Non-Law Proposal (PNL) in the Parliament of Castile and León to ban the Feast of the Lamb, one of the most important holidays for Muslims. Vox justified the initiative as protecting Spain's own customs and not importing foreign festivals. For the moment, the initiative is on standby and will have to wait for the resumption of the session after the summer, although the configuration of the regional Chamber currently rules out any likelihood of its passage.

Similarly, at the end of June, a Vox motion calling for the same ban was registered in the Aragon Parliament. The party's leader in the region, Alejandro Nolasco, justified the proposal as defending Spanish identity against Islamization, calling the celebration outrageous. We will also have to wait until the end of the summer to know the outcome of the debate, although forecasts suggest the initiative will fail, as happened in Zaragoza City Council, when Vox brought a motion to the municipal plenary session calling for the suspension of the Arabic Language and Moroccan Culture Program, which was unsuccessful.

"Jumilla makes history"

The Murcian town of Jumilla was the first to make history, as the Greens posted on their social media: Spain is and always will be a land of Christian roots, they wrote.

Its City Council approved a motion sponsored by Vox (Spanish Nationalist Party) that proposed banning the celebration of Islamic rituals in public spaces, specifically in municipal sports facilities used for prayer by those who profess the Muslim faith. The text justified its intention by stating that these celebrations are cultural practices foreign to Spain and urged the competent authorities to prevent the consolidation of foreign cultural practices that are not part of Spanish tradition and that impact social cohesion, generating internal tensions and conflicts, uprooting, and the erosion of national identity.

The amendment submitted by the Popular Party was the text that ultimately passed, as El Confidencial reported. While it omitted six provisions from the original motion, the Popular Party's text focuses on municipal responsibilities over sports facilities. However, its proposed amendment also mentioned the promotion of cultural activities, campaigns, and proposals that defend our identity and protect religious and traditional values and expressions in our country.

In any case, the PP withdrew the expressions from Vox's statement that could give rise to interpretations that do not fully comply with the current legal framework. For all intents and purposes, the approved reform of the regulations for the use of municipal sports facilities—which was passed with the votes in favor of the PP; those against, from the PSOE and IU-Podemos-AV, with the abstention of Vox—achieves the restriction on the Muslim rite proposed by the Vox councilor, who valued its approval as an objective fulfilled within the party's priorities in the town. Moreover, this was one of its conditions for approving the municipality's public accounts.

That Vox presents this type of initiative in the region of Murcia in particular is not trivial, since Vox's position on migration - radically opposed to that of Pedro Sánchez's Executive -, as well as its vision of environmental policy, was one of the cornerstones of the agreements between the two right-wing parties to unblock the region's budgets at the beginning of last June.

This is not the first case in which the PP has given in to Santiago Abascal's party to meet some of the conditions put on the table in exchange for support. For example, at the beginning of last July, Murcia revoked the purchase of homes for migrant minors after Vox threatened to dynamite the public accounts agreement in the region.